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Baraminology, or discontinuity systematics, is a pseudoscience that attempts to provide a creationist alternative to Linnaean taxonomy and cladistics based on a Biblically literal young Earth worldview.
Baraminology attempts to solve a major creationist and literalist problem: how to fit two (or seven) of every kind of animal on Noah's Ark. The 10 million or more known species of animal could not have fit, let alone survived, on any plausible boat. Baraminology attempts to redefine the meaning of the word "kind", as found in the book of Genesis, to mean a much wider group, known as a baramin, which would reduce the number of animals on the ark.
Rather than common descent, in which all life on earth is descended from a single ancestor, baraminology posits multiple special creation events at the origin of each baramin.
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